Unemployment
Our Columnists
The U.S. Is Reaping the Benefits of Low Unemployment
In many ways, keeping the jobless rate low and the labor markets tight is the most effective and cost-efficient welfare policy there is.
Persons of Interest
What if We’re Thinking About Inflation All Wrong?
Isabella Weber’s heterodox ideas about government price controls are transforming policy in the United States and across Europe.
Annals of Inquiry
What Happens When Jobs Are Guaranteed?
In a small Austrian village, an experimental program finds—or creates—work for the unemployed.
Our Columnists
How the U.S. Economy Defied Omicron to Add Nearly Half a Million Jobs
More people worked from home, but employers kept hiring, giving the Biden Administration an unexpected political lift.
Our Columnists
Three Economic Scenarios for an Election Year
With ten months to the midterms, growth is strong but inflation is hurting the chances of Joe Biden and the Democrats.
Our Columnists
Three Big Takeaways from a Strong July Jobs Report
The Biden economy is growing, but there’s a great need, and a great potential, for further job growth.
Our Columnists
What Does the Delta Variant Mean for the U.S. Economy?
Predictions of a second “Roaring Twenties” have proved premature.
Currency
Are Government Benefits Contributing to Worker Shortages?
Republicans have argued that unemployment supplements are causing worker shortages. But some progressive economists believe that they are helping workers drive a harder bargain for their time.
Our Columnists
What Kind of Economy Will Joe Biden Inherit?
Following positive news about coronavirus-vaccine trials, the long-term macroeconomic environment that the next Administration will face has become a hot topic among economists.
U.S. Journal
Waiting for the Help That Was Promised in Eastern Kentucky
The stimulus checks are gone, and unemployment claims remain unprocessed. The Jaynes family is holding on to half a tank of gas and a dollar-fifty in change.
Currency
What’s Happening to All the CARES Act Money?
The major relief bill that Congress passed in March contained billions of dollars for medium-sized businesses. But just a tiny fraction of the money has been used.
Satire from The Borowitz Report
Trump Signs New Executive Order Granting Himself Unemployment Check in January
In defense of the huge payment, Trump said, “If I’m out of a job, Ivanka, Eric, and Don, Jr., will be, too.”
Our Columnists
Trump’s Latest Executive Orders Are a Political Stunt
The claim that the recent orders will substantially help unemployed Americans, or the economy as a whole, is ludicrous, even by the President’s standards.
Our Columnists
Note to Congress: Don’t Throw the Unemployed Off the Bridge
Republican legislators seem intent on slashing unemployment-insurance payments to tens of millions of American workers who lost their jobs through no fault of their own.
Q. & A.
How to Shorten the American Recession
The economist Richard Koo discusses what the U.S. can learn from Japan’s economic stagnation during the nineteen-nineties, and why containing the coronavirus remains the crucial factor in recovery.
Q. & A.
The “Glaring Holes” in Congress’s Plan to Stabilize the Economy
A COVID-19 Congressional Oversight Commission member sounds off on the real reasons that so little money has reached its intended recipients.
Dispatch
How the Coronavirus is Killing the Middle Class
As the economic shutdown stretches from weeks to months, many who were already struggling must confront an even more uncertain future.
Satire from The Borowitz Report
Unskilled American Somehow Still Employed
The man’s employment has persisted even after his failure at a series of other jobs during the past three years.
Dollars and Cents
The New York Renters Who Can’t Pay May
As the coronavirus economic shutdown stretches on, some tenants are turning missed rent payments into a movement.
Our Columnists
Is It Too Late to Prevent Mass Unemployment Owing to the Coronavirus?
As the virus and lockdowns have spread around the world, other countries have created a type of economic environment different from the one in the U.S.—one that incentivizes businesses to keep employees on their payrolls.